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Located on the Southwest waterfront of Washington, D.C., just under the shadow of Interstate 395, the Maine Avenue Fish Market stands as a cultural relic popular with locals but unknown to many of the tourists who flock to the monuments and museums just five blocks north. There are over ten stores, each with a specialty. The Maine Avenue Fish Market is open each day of the week, but the largest selection of fish is on display Friday evening through Sunday.[2]

A multitude of fresh seafood is sold on floating barges that line the pier along Water Street. These barges are a tribute to the original system in which fishing boats would journey sixty miles back and forth from Colonial Beach, Virginia, where they would harvest the bay. In the 1960s, refrigerated trucks became more efficient and the "buy boats" were permanently docked and later replaced by the steel barges which exist today.

Continuously in operation since 1805,[3] the Maine Avenue Fish Market is the oldest operating fish market in the United States, seventeen years older than New York City's Fulton Fish Market,[4] which was relocated to the Bronx in 2005. The Maine Avenue Market was relocated in the 1960s, within a few blocks of its original location on the Washington Channel.

The original 19th-century Municipal Fish Market building was razed in the 1960s to make way for a waterfront urban renewal project, but the vendors refused to leave and exercised a clause in their leases allowing them to stay for 99 years.[5] As a result, the current Municipal Pier was built for the market underneath the I-395 12th Street highway offramp, to service the new floating barges.

The Fish Market has been praised by urban planners as an example of the sort of small-scale, integrated streetscape which has been displaced by large-scale urban redevelopment in much of the Washington D.C. area.[6] However, the Market is somewhat isolated from the Mall due to its location under the freeway, and the city has refrained from promoting it as an attraction due to uncertainty about whether it can be preserved as an outdoor floating market.

As late as 2009, plans were underway to once again redevelop the entire length of Maine Avenue and remove the frontage road of Water Street, on which the existing waterfront buildings and wharf are located.[7][8] It is unclear what will be the impact on the historic market, or whether it will be wholly preserved, but all of the associated support structures on Water Street, including the sole remaining land-based eatery, were scheduled to be razed ”to keep the Fish Market in safe and operable condition until the redevelopment occurs”.[9] According to a website associated with the developer PN Hoffman, "Washington’s historic Fish Market will be preserved and renovated and the maritime heritage of the site promoted."[10]